proper-15-2019-great-falls.md

Sun, Aug 18, 2019 St. Peter’s, Great Falls

Pentecost 10 – 08/18/2019

Cloud of witnesses

There’s probably something that you enjoy doing just to relax. What is the thing that makes you feel good deep down inside when things haven’t been going great and you just need a break?

The other day we saw something on TV where one of the characters experienced that. He was too overwhelmed with things and he announced that he would be gone for a while to go fishing.

I thought to myself well now that’s a good manly thing to do and I have known people like that.

Now I don’t mind going fishing but it’s never been a relaxing thing for me. There are so many things to think about gathering together just to get out the door; and I don’t really know what I’m doing; and it just becomes a chore.

Mostly facetiously I turned to Mary Pat and asked if she wished that I was the kind of man who would go away fishing for a while just to relax and to get away from the pressures of life. And her response was kind of funny because she looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Of course not.”

There probably are things like that for others. Knitting or needle point might be something like that. Running might be that for some. Woodworking was like that for me at one point. Also sewing. The kind of thing you do that gives you satisfaction and relaxes you and takes you away from pressures that are overbearing.

I thought of these things as a way of getting in touch with who the great cloud of witnesses might be for each of us – the cloud we heard about in today’s second reading. Whoever it was that taught you how to do that thing that gives your life satisfaction and peace – that person would have been a great hero for you.

Chapter 11 in the letter to the Hebrews always gives me chills and resonates deep within me. It causes me to reflect on the people who have made me who I am, the great ones who have passed on wisdom, or talent, or examples of life that have given me peace.

It causes me to reflect and remember who the fathers and mothers are for me. Many young people have told me over the years that the person who passed on their deepest faith was their grandmother. My own grandmother modeled and taught me her Methodist faith when I was still very young. My earliest memory of her was teaching us Sunday school at her little country church. I was eager to learn from her one of her childhood prayers, in German, and at some level I think I probably thought that prayers were originally composed in the German language.

I remember also the priest who taught me that laughter and gaiety could be and perhaps ought to be associated with Christian faith. The bishop who showed us the teething marks on his pectoral cross that had been made by his now ordained son whom I also knew.

I remember hearing about Nicholas Ferrar from my parish priest. Ferrar was a famous lawyer and politician in England in the 1600’s. He gave it all up to live in the country with an extended family, creating a kind of pseudo-monastic religious community. The prayed 24/7 in a restored chapel in the village of Little Gidding. The story of his life inspired me and taught me some important lessons about the most important poem in my life, the Four Quartets by TS Eliot.

I think of the priest who first opened up for me the depth and power of the New Testament. I was taking an adult class and he was the teacher. We spent about three weeks on chapter 5 of Paul’s letter to the Romans. And at that point I knew something of how the Bible can speak to us of the depths of life and faith.

This chapter of the letter to the Hebrews reflects in the same way as I have tried to do briefly here about the great fathers and mothers who have come before us. The great ones who have given us life. Adam and Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac Jacob Esau. Joseph. And that only covers the highlights found in Genesis.

The writer of the letter becomes breathless at the thought of all those who make up the great cloud of witnesses that have come before us. And none of them was able to get to what God had promised them. We might say, none of them got to the promised land. Each of them was walking by faith although they couldn’t see fully where they were going. They walked by faith.

Walk by faith

“39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40 since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

They sought the “founder and perfector of our faith.” And so he urges them not to grow weary.

“let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”

I believe that there have been many such fathers and mothers of the faith who have brought you, the people of St. Peter’s great Falls, to where you are today. And with you I give great thanks and praise for all that they have done and been for you.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. (Basho)

It doesn’t take very much looking around the town of Great Falls to see that in many ways the ruins of the past lie around us. We grow old and recognize that better times lay in our past than what seems to be nearing us on the coming horizon.

The great ones of old may seem like heroes who can never come back. Men and women who knew how to live in the fullness of what God intends for us. And in their reflection we may feel discouraged.

Live forward

We gain wisdom by looking back at what has gone before. But we must live going forward, (Kierkegaard:)

Which is always like looking through a glass darkly at best.

Whether we live in a place like Great Falls that shows all the signs of decline that one could want or in a place like Charlotte that is bursting forth with young people and energy and anticipation of what is to come. In either case and in both cases the way forward is for us to be in touch with the passion and vision of those who have made us who we are today.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. (Basho)

What are the virtues of those heroes who brought us to this place? Hope and perseverance to build what they couldn’t see. The grit and determination to overcome the forces of disintegration that faced them. The peace that allowed them to put one step in front of another even when they could not see where it led. They carried with them a passion for the one that they sought above all, the Lord and creator of the universe.

Ours is not to copy them. Ours is to hold their passion and their delight before us as we step forward into our unknowns.

Liberation of the Gospel

The gospel intends to set us free from any looking back that may trap us in regrets or guilt or second thoughts. It is intended to shake us from the inertia of lethargy and to light a fire.

It is what it literally says in Luke 12.

Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”

Jesus asks us about how we can be so numb to what’s right in front of us that we can’t take the step forward that so readily awaits us.

“When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, `It is going to rain’; …” Jesus says, but you don’t know how to read the signs of the times.

These words sound harsh and even unforgiving. The way I hear them, though, they are the first part of a two-part plea for the people whom he cares for more than he can possibly say. One the one hand, “Wake up.” That’s today’s passage. On the other hand, “I will be with you unto the end of the age.” That comes at the end of the gospel of Matthew.

The great cloud of witnesses bears witness to the relentless love that the Lord gives to us. On that we can rest no matter what happens.

Step forth in faith. Amen.

Notes

The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Color: Green Assigned Readings (Proper 15 )
Track One Lesson 1: Isaiah 5:1-7 Psalm: 80:1-2,8-18
Track Two Lesson 1: Jeremiah 23:23-29 Psalm: 82
Lesson 2: Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Gospel: Luke 12:49-56

lectionary

Isaiah:

  • Let me sing for my beloved
    my love-song concerning his vineyard:

    My beloved had a vineyard
    on a very fertile hill.

    [and then]

  • And now I will tell you
    what I will do to my vineyard.

    I will remove its hedge,
    and it shall be devoured;

    I will break down its wall,
    and it shall be trampled down.

Hebrews:

  • faith … people passed through Red Sea
  • “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses”
  • cf. e.g. the reading last night from Zen re. receiving from the great ones

Luke:

  • I came to bring fire to the earth … father against son … but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"
  • cf. we are so blind to what’s going on closest to us – what we have the most invested in

Sat, Aug 24, 2019

Saint Bartholomew 08/25/2019

Saint Bartholomew the Apostle Color: Red Assigned Readings Lesson 1: Deuteronomy 18:15-18 Psalm: 91 or 91:1-

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